


The Long Haul

by Roadside_Wildflower



Category: Brave (2012), Disney - All Media Types, Disney Princesses, Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Athletes, Developing Relationship, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Romance, Truckers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadside_Wildflower/pseuds/Roadside_Wildflower
Summary: Merida had been a track star up until the end of her sophomore season when she tore several ligaments in her knee, ending her college career. She's lucky that the surgeries gave her back some usage of her leg. She can walk, unassisted, but she'll never run again. She refuses to be broken though, even after losing her athletic scholarship, and decides to let fate take her where it pleases. Now, she works as a trucker and despite what she has been warned, she picks up a hitchhiker in Oklahoma, a fragile blonde her own age with an icy demeanor. Together, perhaps they can begin to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives as they drive across the country.





	1. Oklahoma

**Author's Note:**

> This one is going to be a few chapters. I dunno how long it'll take me to write and post them, but probably not too long. I was reading an article about queer truckers and it made me kinda want to write a fanfic about it, so here we are!

It was awkward. Far more awkward than she had thought it would be, and she had already been under the impression that it would be very awkward.

In all fairness, it wasn’t entirely her fault. Sure, the first few words out of her mouth hadn’t been great. But this woman was so fucking stony, so ice cold, that it seemed like with every word Merida spoke, the other woman closed up even more.

It wasn’t Merida’s fault, it’s not like she had picked up any hitchhikers before. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now that the woman was in her truck. Everyone always said not to pick up hitchhikers, and Merida had never thought she would, except… this woman had looked so alone, so lost, and so vulnerable, that she was worried that some creepy man might pick her up and do something to her. And so she had thought it natural to tell her that, in just about those words exactly, but the woman hadn’t seemed to take it particularly well.

Merida sighed and tried to keep her eyes firmly fixed on the road in front of her. It was hard to keep her attention directed outside the cab, partly because Oklahoma was such a fucking boring state, and partly because of just how stunning and intriguing her new driving companion was. Her platinum blonde hair lay long and straight against her back, and if it weren’t for subtle streaks of a slightly darker blonde mixed through her hair, Merida would’ve thought it was dyed. Her skin was so pale, almost translucent really, that it seemed like she had never seen the light of day. Her face though was what really piqued Merida’s interest. It was drawn in almost harsh, uncaring lines, but there was a sharp intelligence that shone through her demeanor. Whoever she was, this woman was no fool.

“So,” Merida began, jollily, “are you a university student?”

The girl didn’t respond, and the cab was silent except for the hum of the road underneath and the faint twang of bluegrass seeping out from her speakers. After a long pause, Merida reached to turn the music up, needing at least something to keep her company, but the woman beside her finally responded.

“Yes, or well, I was.”

“Oh, nice. I was too, up until a few months ago,” Merida said, trying not to let her excitement show. So the girl could speak after all! If this had been some surrealist horror movie, the girl beside her surely would’ve turned out to be some porcelain doll that had came to trick her and eat her brain by now. Or something like that.

“Did you go to school here? I mean in Oklahoma?” Merida asked, trying to get a conversation started.

“I just finished my AA from a local community college, not too far away from where you picked me up.”

“That’s real neat, I was going up to university in Washington, state that is, but I needed to take a break for a while. So here I am, working as a trucker, of all things. Never thought I’d be doing the same trade as my uncle, of all people,” Merida said with a small chuckle. The attitude was almost glacial between them, and Merida was beginning to wonder if this icy gal was ever going to thaw and warm up to her. “So, you from Oklahoma?”

“Yes,” the woman replied, expressionless as ever.

“That’s neat. I’m from North Carolina, in the mountains. Broke my ma’s heart when I turned down the offer from Appalachian state, but that was nothing compared to when I let it slip that I was dating a woman,” Merida said, face burning at the admission. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to let that slip, I guess it’s just a weakness of mine. Just too chatty for my own good. Something I should work on, I guess. Sorry,” she said, face flushing even brighter as she rambled on. God damn it, why couldn’t she just hold a normal conversation? And why did she have to let it slip that she was a lesbian, of all things? Now the other woman probably thought she was some creep who had only picked her up because she was looking for a quick fuck.

“Well, I guess we have that much in common.”

“Being gay?” Merida asked, surprised.

The woman’s face flushed to a deep crimson, and it was almost comical how fast an innocent question had broken down her poker face. “I was referring to the part about breaking my mother’s heart.”

“It’s a ritual for all daughters at some point, I suppose.”

“Yeah, well I think my mother deserved it.”

Merida laughed at the other woman’s spunk. “That she probably did. There’s always a chance for her to come around though, at least that’s what I’d like to think about my own mama.”

“I don’t think that will happen.”

“She just too stubborn?”

“She’s just too dead.”

Merida burst out laughing. “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry for laughing at that. That’s terrible to hear, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It ended up being better for everyone that way.”

“You think so?”

“My sister is with some of my father’s relatives now. It’s a much better environment for her there.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know, but at least I’m free of her.”

“She must have been quite a piece of work.”

“She was.”

“So she hasn’t been gone long, as she?” Merida asked, gently prying for more information.

“It’s been two months.”

“Were you left to plan the funeral?”

“We didn’t do one. Didn’t have the money for one, and no one would have showed anyways,” the other woman said, sighing. “I scattered her ashes in the backyard, before they made me move out. She never really left the house in life, so I thought it would be fitting for her to stay there in death as well.”

“Did she not leave you anything?”

“She didn’t have anything to leave us. We lived on her disability and my part-time wages.”

“That’s… brutal, I’m sorry,” Merida said, shooting a small smile over to the other woman. “So what have you been doing, for the last two months?”

The blonde shrugged, and stared out the window. “I finished my AA degree. I worked part-time. I rented out a motel room. Not the hotel type, but long-term type.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I thought about just working full-time in town for a while, but after I finished school, I just- I just couldn’t stay. I didn’t know what to do next. Mother dying really fucked up my plans,” she said with a bitter chuckle. “I dreamed of real freedom for me and my sister for so long, but now that I have it, I don’t know what to do. The world is just too big, I- I don’t know what to do. So I just sorta decided to…” she said, trailing off and shrugging her shoulders.

“Leave it up to fate?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I did,” Merida said, nodding her head. “I was attending university on an athletic scholarship, for track. I totally fucked up my knee though. I can walk on it now, but I'll never be able to run again. None of my family would take me back, ‘cause of the whole gay thing, I knew that much, and my girlfriend left me ‘cause I was ‘too bitter,’ so I just sort of wandered my way into a job, and now I’m working as a trucker.” Merida paused. “I don’t think we properly introduced ourselves. I’m Merida,” she said, flashing a grin at the other woman.

“Elsa,” she said, giving a small smile in return.

“I’m bound for Washington, by the way,” Merida said, eyes fixed back to the road. "Just came from Dallas, made a stop in Oklahoma City, and then of course that quick one I made when I picked you up. A lot of truckers try to go fast so they won’t stop when they need to, or they’ll use stimulants to stay awake longer. That’s not my style though, so you don’t have to worry about that with me.”

“Any reason in particular?”

“It sounds unpleasant, and it’s not like I’ve got a family at home to feed. The bonuses aren’t worth the pain and effort, and I’m not trying to make a career out of this. It’s just something to give me time to think about my next steps, and a bit of money to get me through until then,” Merida explained. “They aren’t gonna fire me, so I don’t see the problem with taking it at my own pace.”

“It sounds sort of nice, actually,” Elsa said, nodding her head.

“Yeah. Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Our route is going to take us up north to Wichita, west to Denver and then Salt Lake, northwest to Boise, and then finally up to Seattle. After that, I’ll be returning back to my place, a little cabin out in the woods outside of Everett.”

“You live in a cabin?”

“Yeah," Merida said with a small chuckle. "I've always loved the woods and mountains, and I needed enough space to park the semi and my little flat in Everett just wouldn’t do it. So I found a little cabin that had just entered the market for cheap. It’s got no cell reception, ‘cause it was a holiday escape, up until my landlord’s wife passed away at least.”

“That sounds really nice.”

“Well, if you stick it out with me, you’re welcome to stay a little while until you get back on your feet.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t offer that to just anyone, but you and me seem like we get along pretty well. Now, we’ve still got a whole lot of road ahead of us, so you may change your mind and just want to hop off along the way, but it might be nice,” Merida said, shrugging. “I’m very much the type to just go with the flow, and though it sounds corny, I’m a bit of a believer in fate,” she said with a wink.

“What do you mean by fate?”

“Well,” Merida said, slightly blushing as she scratched her head through her long mane of red curls, “it’s not that I think everything happens for a reason, or that our lives are designed in some perfect way. I’m not religious, and I’m certainly not the ‘spiritual but not religious type,’ but the way I see it, there’s only one way that things are bound to happen. Before we make a choice, we may seem unsure of what we were going to do, but once we make the choice, we know that there was a 100% certainty that that was the choice we were going to make. We make the choices we make because those are the choices we were bound to make, so it's silly to think that we would have ever acted in some other way.”

“So you don’t believe in free will?”

“Not necessarily, I think people do shape their fate because of who they are. But I also think that our future will play out in the only way it can, exactly because of who we are. That’s what I mean by fate,” Merida said, looking over at her companion’s bemused face.

“I’m not sure I buy it.”

“That’s fine,” Merida said, shrugging. “I just think it makes things easier that way. You don’t have to worry about whether you made a mistake in the past, or if you’re going to make a mistake in the future. You can just let yourself breathe and let life sweep you away.”

“It would be nice to not have those worries,” Elsa said with a sigh. “There are a lot of things I believe that I should have done differently. That I should have done better. And I have no clue where I’m going to end up,” she said, closing her eyes. “So I guess I’ll try it. I’ll just stay along for the ride and see where this ‘fate’ takes me.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Merida said, nodding her head.

The rest of the way to Wichita was quiet, but it didn’t bother Meridia. Usually, it would have; she was the type who would talk nonstop around others because the silence bothered her. It was something that her ex had complained about, from time to time. But maybe all the trucking had changed things. Or maybe, it was because of her companion, perhaps Merida felt comfortable around her in a way that she wasn’t always around others. Regardless of the reason, Merida was looking forward to the rest of the drive.


	2. Colorado

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fairly short and mostly fluffy chapter <3

“Wow, I… I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Elsa said, her eyes wide.

“What, the mountains?” Merida asked, eyes fixed at the road ahead which cut right through the rapidly approaching mountains.

“Yeah,” Elsa said softly, craning her head to get a better view of the mountains up ahead. “It was dark when we got to Denver last night, so I didn’t see them then, but… wow. They’re incredible. The pictures don’t do justice of how much they dwarf you.”

“The rockies are incredible, I’ll give you that. Quite stark, really,” Merida said, grinning. “Over in the Appalachians we’ve got lots of foothills, and our mountains are a lot more rounded, so they don’t seem that big. But the these mountains, they seem to just erupt from the earth, don’t they?”

“They do, they’re like giant spires of ice, reaching up towards the sky,” the woman said, giving a contented sigh. “I think I’d be very happy if I could live in the mountains one day.”

“Well then you’ll love Washington, we’ve got some of the prettiest mountains you’ll see. Not as big as these, mind you, but beautiful.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Elsa said, a bright smile on her face and an excited gleam in her eyes. This was the first time Merida had seen the other woman so happy and it warmed her heart.

“So,” Merida began, “you never really traveled much?”

“I’ve never left Oklahoma all my life,” Elsa said, shaking her head softly. “I went to Oklahoma City once on a class field trip, but other than that, I’ve never really left my hometown.”

“Fuck, for real?”

“We didn’t have a car when I was a teenager. We’d take a bus to the grocery store, and I’d bike to work and to school most days.”

Merida sat in silence for a moment, soaking in the implications of the other woman’s words. Elsa had lived a bit of fucked up life, that was for sure. “My hometown doesn’t have a bus, and a bike doesn’t do you much good either. Too hilly, and things are just too far spread apart. There’s a small downtown area, but it’s just got a small church, a gas station with a small fried chicken place attached to it, a Family Dollar, and a small local grocer. I got my pawpaw’s old truck for my sixteenth birthday, and that’s what I used to get around. Never really traveled much though, mostly ‘cause my all my family lived in the area, so my folks never felt the need to go anywhere else. My family’s been in those mountains since the Scots came down to them,” Merida said, her nose wrinkled, “and I can’t say it was a great decision for them to stay.”

“Sounds like our childhoods weren’t too different in some ways,” Elsa said, a wry grin on her face.

“I guess so. You mentioned a little sister, yesterday. I’ve got three little brothers of my own.”

“How old are they?”

“They’re actually triplets,” Merida said with a sheepish grin. “They’re ten right now.”

“Are you close?”

“Not anymore. I haven’t really spoken with my family for a couple of years now, and they’re still quite young.”

“Maybe when they’re a bit older, they’ll come around to you. Maybe they’ll be gay too,” Elsa said with a small laugh, and Merida felt her stomach tingle at the sound. Damn, this woman could be cute when her guard was let down.

“So, how about yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a little sister, right?” Merida asked, glancing over her shoulder at the woman beside her. Elsa stiffened, as if Merida had said some deeply offensive thing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, it’s… it’s alright. My sister and I,” she said, taking in a deep breath. “We didn’t really get along that well. I mean, we were close when we were younger, but as she’s gotten older, we’ve grown apart.”

“I’m sorry,” Merrida said softly. The truck was silent for a long moment except for mechanical hum of the engine.

“I just- she didn’t understand the burden I had!” Elsa said, getting frustrated. “She didn’t understand why I couldn’t play with her all the time. She didn’t understand why I hated our mother so much. My mother could be a cruel person, to me especially, and I had to work just to make ends meet for us. I couldn’t be the same kid she got to be.”

“I’m sure as she gets older she’ll understand.”

“She’s turning seventeen in a week, so it’s not like she’s some naive child,” Elsa said bitterly.

“The last time she was with you, she would’ve been grieving your mother’s death. She’s had a bit of time and space to understanding things better now, so maybe that’ll help.”

“Maybe,” Elsa said, without any further elaboration. She turned her head to look out the window, returning to the the cold woman Merida had picked up yesterday.

Merida popped a CD in her car stereo, and a few seconds later, the familiar sounds of the Carolina Chocolate Drops washed over the car. In retrospect, Merida wished he had a wider selection of music to chose from. Not everyone appreciated her southern folk music, a lesson she had learned repeatedly in Washington.

“You know,” the red head began, trying to bring Elsa back into a conversation, “it’s a little embarrassing, but I actually play the banjo. Well, I didn’t think it was embarrassing to play the banjo growing up, but I get teased mercilessly for it sometimes,” she said with an awkward chuckle. Elsa still hadn’t relaxed again, but she had at least turned her head to listen to Merida. “The worst was probably was this one time I was sitting at a stoplight, minding my own business. I’ve got North Carolina plates on my pawpaw’s old truck, which admittedly looked like shit, and I was in Idaho, because I was driving up to Washington for the first time from North Carolina. So I’m sitting at the stoplight, my windows rolled down, with a little bit of folk playing off of some speakers I had hooked up to my phone, ‘cause the truck was too old to have a CD player or anything in it. And this guy pulls up beside me in this brand-spankin’ new red chevy, and he calls out to me ‘you from North Carolina?’ I hesitate a little, ‘cause you know, why does he fucking care? But I shrug and call back yeah, thinking he was just curious, but the twat decides to call back out to me ask ‘you got a banjo in there or something?’ He starts laughing hysterically to himself and the light turns green and he speeds out of there, but the worst part of it was was that my face turned this horrible, deep red, ‘cause it was true! I did have a banjo in there. But like, he was from fucking Idaho, so who was he to judge,” Merida finished, her face slightly flushed from the memory.

“I think it's pretty cool, actually.”

“What?”

“I think it’s cool that you can play the banjo,” Elsa said, with a small smile. “I can’t do anything like that, so it’s cool you can do music on top of everything else.”

Merida blushed and kept her eyes on the road, knowing that a surge of butterflies would rise in her stomach if she looked back over at the blonde. No one in Washington had ever told her that before, and it felt nice to hear Elsa say it. “Thanks,” she said awkwardly, “but I’m sure there are plenty of cool things that you can do.”

“Not really, unless you count exceptional grocery-bagging abilities as being cool.”

“It’s not something I can do,” Merida said, shrugging.

“Once I graduated high school I was the weekend manager of the grocery store,” Elsa said, shooting her a serious look. “That’s obviously a very impressive position right there.”

“Oh yeah, so sexy,” Merida teased, feeling her face heat up at how flirtatious she sounded.

Elsa blushed a little as well and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m quite good at riding a bike, it helped me keep in good shape, and I’d like to think I’m a good cook, too. I did read a lot as well, to decompress at night. I just didn’t have the time to devote to hobbies, though I do like writing, and I’d like to do a bit more of it one day.”

“Well if you do ever write anything, feel free to send me whatever rough drafts you like, though I’ll admit that I’m not a huge reader.”

“Thanks,” Elsa said, giving Merida a wide smile. Finally, the ice princess was warming up to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things will get a bit heavier in the next chapter.
> 
> The little story about Merida getting called out at stoplight is actually based on my own experience, so it's not as absurd of a story as it might seem. In my case, I had Alabama plates, I was in central Florida town called Arcadia, and I don't actually play the banjo. The funny thing though is that Arcadia is basically just as trashy and maybe even trashier than much of the rural south, so like wtf dude, I'm not the one who chooses lives in fucking Arcadia even though you could literally move a couple hours down the road an live in a nice(ish) place like Ft. Myers. Anyways, if you're interested in a bit of indie folk with a Southern feel, check out Mandolin Orange or the Carolina Chocolate Drops. As a queer gal with taste I can't stand to listen to country music anymore, so they play music in the genre I used to fill the gap.


	3. Idaho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is heavy

“Yeah, I _am_ saying Hans Christian Andersen was a bastard, and if you want to read actual _good_ folk tales, you’ve gotta look at the Contes de fées of the salon era,” Merida said, intent on proving her point.

“Oh shut up, you’re just saying that because half of them were raging lesbians-”

“And so what about that?”

“You said your favorite writer was Murat!”

“Yeah?”

“Her stuff isn’t even that good!”

“It _is_ good, and yes, part of the reason I like her so much is ‘cause she was a lesbian icon of late seventeenth century France. Is that so wrong?”

Elsa shook her head. “Fine, but you have to admit, the salon era of fairy tales, of all the important moments in the development of the genre, was the least important.”

“Beauty and the Beast was written in the salon era.”

“Yeah but Perrault and Grimms and Andersen are what we mostly remember and care about today.”

“Most of those were just variations on tales that Basile and Straparola wrote that had been circulating around Europe for a century,” Merida said, exasperated, by also thrilled by the conversation.

“Ugh, we already went over this,” Elsa said, rolling her eyes. “There’s no proof to that.”

“There’s strong evidence. And besides, the tales that the they were writing during the salon era were far more interesting and inventive.”

“I guess we’ll just agree to disagree,” Elsa said, a grin splitting her face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll convince you if it’s the death of me,” Merida giggled, pulling into the parking lot of the trucker’s motel.

Merida had been worried that the two wouldn’t find much common ground or interests, but crazily enough of all things, the two both had a fierce interest in European folk and fairy tales. Merida wasn’t much of a reader, but she loved the quirks and twists of the genre, and she was glad to have found someone else who appreciated them like she did.

The truck stuttered to a halt under her, and Merida slipped down from the truck in a fluid motion. Elsa followed suit a moment later, and the two grabbed their bags. The pair strutted across the asphalt parking lot and into the dingy motel, stopping at the front desk. The sky outside had been dark for a few hours now, and the cold fluorescent lighting of the motel did little to make the area seem inviting.

“Can we get a room for the night?” Merida asked, pulling out her wallet. The bored attendant nodded and and grabbed a blank white key card. She ran it through the machine and handed it back to Merida a moment later.

“Room number’ll be 12,” she said, fixing her attention back to her computer monitor.

The two hurried down the hall. Elsa’s muffled giggling filled the hallway, and Merida turned to give her a quizzical look.

“Sorry, it’s just that she’s got to have been the most bored looking person I’ve ever seen,” Elsa said, shaking her head.

“Well it’s a common look at these sorts of motels, it’s not exactly the type of place you’re proud of working at, though I’m not sure what other jobs there really are on the outskirts of Boise” Merida replied, opening the door with her key card. The door swung open to reveal a small, dark room that likely hadn’t been updated since the building was first constructed, decades ago. A full size bed sat in the middle, but other than that and a nightstand, the room was barren.

“I’m going to hit the bathroom real quick,” Merida said, sleep quickly fogging her brain. It had been a long day on the road. When she stepped back out again a moment later, her companion was by the bed, pulling clothes out of her bag.

“I’m going to shower in the morning after you,” Elsa said, yawning. “Turn around for a sec so I can take off my bra and change my shirt.”

“Why, you afraid I won’t like what I see?” Merida teased, raising her eyebrows suggestively at the girl.

“Oh shut it, just don’t look,” she said, gripping the hem of her shirt.

Merida turned around, but after a brief moment, she twisted back around to sneak a peek at the other woman. Her heart swooned as she caught a glimpse of Elsa’s thick, half-unravel braid laying sensuously over her bare shoulders. Her eyes traced downwards, trying to soak in the view as fast as she could before the woman could pull her t-shirt over her head. A small gasp slipped from Merida’s lips. Tendrils of white snaked across the the other woman’s back. If they had been ornamental, perhaps they would have been beautiful, like thin lines of ice forming the delicate fractal of a snowflake. But they did not speak of beauty or grace or elegance. These were lines etched by fear and pain, lacerations that ripped and teared their way down her back. Fabric slipped over them only a moment later, but they remained imprinted in Merida's mind. The other woman twisted back to face Merida. Merida tried to turn around, as if she could pretend like she hadn’t seen anything, but Elsa caught her eyes before she could look away. In that brief moment, the other woman looked less like a human and more like a frightened animal, and Merida felt less like a friend and more like a hunter, a hunter who was staring into the eyes of a doe as it felt her arrow lodge into its chest.

“Sorry, I- I-” Merida sputtered, searching for an excuse.

“I told you not to look,” Elsa mumbled softly, her eyes cast down, face bathed in a renewed baptism of pain and shame.

“I guess I just wanted to tease you a little bit afterwards, but- I didn’t realize,” Merida mumbled, casting her eyes down in shame now as well.

Elsa sighed and sat tenderly on the edge of the bed. “It’s alright. They were my one and only parting gift from my mother. For years, as a child, she took her anger out on me after my father died.”

“That’s… that’s terrible, I’m so sorry,” Merida said, hoping that she could find the right words to say. She sat down on the bed next to the girl, close enough for support, but distant enough to give her space.

“Physical pain… it’s not so bad. Eventually, it goes away, even if faint marks of it remain. But emotional pain, it stays, it lingers and worms its way into every part of your life,” Elsa said, tilting her eyes to look up at the ceiling. “My father, he was in the military, and he died while he was deployed overseas. It wasn’t in the line of duty though, he died of a ‘workplace accident.’ My mom decided it was a suicide though. She blamed it on me. Because I was a freak, that’s why my father had killed himself.”

“What- what do you mean? How could she say such a thing about someone as wonderful as you?” A silence stifled the room, and Elsa seemed as if she were frozen in place. Merida felt her face flush with heat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Merida said, offering the other woman a concerned look. Elsa seemed to melt all at once a few moments later. She took a deep breath in and tightened her hands, which were now clenched against her sides.

“No, it’s alright. I should tell you.” The trembling woman took a deep breath in, and Merida found her own heart racing as how fragile and nervous the woman seemed in this moment. She may have seemed like some cold, frigid ice queen when they had first met, but ice was also brittle, and the woman beside her had already been through more than anyone should ever have to.

“No, Elsa, you really don’t have to, I didn’t mean to push, I-”

“No,” Elsa interrupted, holding up her hand. “I should share this. It’s stupid, I never cared much about it, but- sometimes other people seem to. So I’ve never really shared it with anyone before,” she said, gnawing on her bottom lip. “I was- I was born intersex,” she said, a dark flush growing on her face. “It’s a broad term to describe people who, when they’re born, don’t easily fall into one particular category. I have a form of moderate androgen insensitivity, and it, um,” she said, her face growing darker by the second. “I’m sorry, I’ve just never talked about this with anyone but doctors, and I- I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Merida said, giving the distraught woman a small smile. “It’s alright, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to,” Elsa said, breathing in deeply. “So, um, with the androgen insensitivity, I was born with the genes to be a man, but my body doesn’t respond right to male hormones. So when I was born, I, ah, didn't have clear genitalia. So they did a surgical operation on me, and, um, they decided that I should try to live as a boy. And that would’ve been fine, and all, except, I felt like a girl. And around when I was three, that’s I started telling my parents that I felt that way, and when I was four, I refused to be treated as anything but such. So, my parents consulted with the doctors, and they said that they should treat me as a girl, because of the androgen insensitivity, and later if I still felt the way, they said I should be put on hormone therapy, which I was.” Elsa paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts.

“Thanks for sharing that with me. Just so you know, I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with you,” Merida said, trying to strike a balance between a light and tender tone. “I had a friend in college who was trans.”

“Thanks. It’s a little different from being trans though, I think? I’m not really sure. I just know I’m a woman, and I don’t care for any other label.” Elsa cleared her throat. “Anyways, my parents didn’t take it well. They did as the doctors said, but grudgingly, and- and even then I could start to feel my mother’s anger towards me. A couple months later, my dad went on a brief deployment for six months to Bahrain. He died a month into it, so my mom decided he had killed himself because his ‘son’ turned out to be a freak, a freak from birth and a freak for the rest of their life,” Elsa said, chuckling bitterly. “And I don’t know, maybe he did kill himself because of it. But my mom spent every day of her life afterwards blaming me for it. My little sister was born a while later, and while my mom was nicer to her, it didn’t really matter. My mom never got a job, so we scraped by on survivor’s benefits, but eventually the payout from his death ran out, around when I was fourteen. I had to start chipping in. My mom’s alcoholism took up anything we might have gotten from her, so I had to buy the groceries with my pay, and cook, for me and my sister. She was too young to understand just why I was so cold and why I always had to be responsible, and it was around that time when we started drifting apart. She was always so full of energy and life, but I was constantly drained by the end of each day. I wish I could’ve left, the moment I turned eighteen. I really wish I could’ve. But I couldn’t leave her there in that house, so I stayed.”

“That was really brave of you, to stay for her” Merida said softly, resting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “If it helps, I think you’re an incredible woman, through and through.”

“Thanks,” Elsa said, giving Merida a small smile. “I think that’s the first time anyone has ever shown me any appreciation for what I had to do.”

“No one, especially one as young as yourself, should’ve had to live with that burden. I wish you could’ve lived a different life, one with better parents,” Merida said wistfully.

Elsa shrugged. “I just did what I had to do. Anyways, I don’t have to carry that burden any more, thankfully. Like I mentioned, my mother passed away. Her drinking caught up with her. She drank too much booze one night and took some pills and the next morning, she was lying there dead on the couch.”

“That’s… brutal.”

“I was up early for work anyways, so I got her covered up in a blanket before Anna could stumble onto the scene. It still broke her heart, for some reason,” Elsa said, sighing. “She was pissed to no end when I didn’t hold a funeral, but we didn’t have any money, and mom didn’t really have any family. She was an only child, and both of her parents had been dead a long time.”

“You said before that Anna went to live with some of your dad’s extended family, right?”

“Right,” Elsa said, sighing. “We had never met, but I had managed to track down our father’s brother. He agreed to take her in.”

“Where does he live?”

“Oregon, in Salem.”

“We can go visit her, after we make it back to Washington. It’s not that far of a trip.”

“Maybe.”

“I can take you, or, if you’re more comfortable, you can take my car by yourself.”

“I can’t drive, Merida,” Elsa said, sighing. “And I don’t even know if she’d want to see me.”

“Oh, right, sorry. Can you call her first maybe, and test the waters?”

“I don’t have a phone, and I don’t know her number, I just have the address written down.”

“Well, I’m more than willing to take you.”

“I don’t know if I want to see her.”

“Oh, okay, I understand.”

“No, it’s not for the reasons you might think,” Elsa said hastily, before pausing to collect her thoughts. “I want to see her again, I mean, shit, I practically raised her and sacrificed a lot of my life just to make sure she stayed safe. I love her more than anything, even though she doesn't always seem to think terribly highly of me.”

“What is it then?”

“It’s just- I've always suppressed myself and my own wishes and desires. I had to, to grow up with a mother who hated me and to look after Anna. I- I don't know how to be anything but the cold, distant responsible girl I had to be growing up. If I go visit Anna now, I can’t be that anymore. I’d have no excuse not to be better, I’d have to be open up and by my own person. But it scares me, to open up, because I don't know what I'll find, or maybe it's what I won't find that I'm really scared of. I'm scared I won't have a heart, or dreams or wishes of my own. I don't know what I want,” Elsa said, an acute look of terror on her face. “I just- I don’t know,” she whispered, looking up at Merida.

“Well,” Merida said, softly brushing the other woman’s hair form her eyes “just think of one thing you want to do, and we'll do it right here. It can be a start. A small one, but a start nonetheless.” Merida looked upwards, searching her mind for suggestions. “We could go stargazing, or we could go to a bar, or we could find somewhere for a midnight swim, or-”

Merida was interrupted by a pair of soft lips pressed up against her own. She felt her face flush to a red even darker than the shade of her hair, and she kissed the woman back, savoring the faint taste of her vanilla lip balm.

Elsa pulled her head back, her eyes flicked towards the ground in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to creep you out or make things awkward, it’s just, there weren’t exactly a lot of out gay girls where I lived, and I didn’t have the time anyways, and-”

Merida reached her hand to softly rest underneath Elsa’s chin, and she tilted the other woman’s face up next to hers. The blonde fell silent, and Merida felt a fire burning through her as she gazed into Elsa’s shimmering eyes, which had taken on the color of a melting glacier. Her hearted quickened, and she leaned her mouth in to kiss Elsa. It began sweet and tender, but it quickly turned in a long, passionate kiss. Merida broke away but Elsa grabbed the back of her neck and pressed her into another intense kiss. Merida’s hands reached out and ran down Elsa’s shoulders and down to her side, and Elsa’s hands soon began roaming around Merida’s body in turn. Merida began tugging at the hem of Elsa’s shirt, but the blonde girl shyly grabbed her hands and moved them away.

“Um, I- I don’t think I want to go any further than this tonight,” Elsa said, her face flushed. “I mean, you’re gorgeous and all, but- I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Merida said, placing a small kiss on Elsa’s forehead. “We can just cuddle, and it’s fine with me if that’s all tomorrow night, and the night after that, and so on.”

“Thanks,” Elsa said, wrapping her arms around the red head. “I think I might starting to fall for you a little bit.”

“I just might be too,” Merida whispered, holding Elsa close to her. What a fucking truck drive it had been so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully y'all found that chapter to be tastefully done. I myself am not intersex, nor did I suffer any trauma at the hands of my parents as child, so I did a bit of research before writing this and tried to convey that experience as well as I could. When I was drafting up the idea for Elsa's character, I wanted to mirror her canon emotional development during childhood in this AU. So, I spent a long time thinking about what might cause a person to live similarly to how Elsa does in the movie. In my eyes, she needed to be responsible and intelligent, while also being held back and essentially abused because of her family's misconceptions about some innate part of herself. So, I thought that this scenario was one of the more compelling ways to echo this, while still being fairly original in terms of what other people have done with the character.
> 
> On a lighter note, I was actually a little divided on what kind of common interests the two should share. Lit is my wheelhouse, but since Merida's not a big reader in this fic, I decided to do the ironic and totally-not-clichéd thing of having them bond over fairy tales. I took a class on the genre a year ago, so I knew just enough to make them sound well-versed on the subject without saying much in the way of smart things XD.
> 
> Anyways, for the millions upon millions of y'all reading this, I hope you enjoyed. If you're following along with a mental roadmap, you'll realize that their roadtrip is almost done, but there's still a bit more story to come afterwards :D


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